


the last one standing

by SportRayne (rayningnight)



Series: Rayne's KageHina Week 2020 [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Day 1 - First Meeting, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, KageHina Week 2020, M/M, Warning: Written in 2 Hours, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24750139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayningnight/pseuds/SportRayne
Summary: Imagine this: Shouyou’s middle school does have a volleyball team. An average team, a fun team, atallteam. Shouyou is ecstatic, until he’s shoved into the libero position, and no one will let him jump and spike.Liberos can't attack, as it turns out.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Series: Rayne's KageHina Week 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789762
Comments: 4
Kudos: 38
Collections: Kagehina Week 2020





	the last one standing

Imagine this: Shouyou’s middle school _does_ have a volleyball team. An average team, a fun team, a _tall_ team. Shouyou is ecstatic, until he’s shoved into the libero position, and no one will let him jump and spike.

Liberos can't attack, as it turns out.

He’s just a first year, and he’s not good, he’s still learning the game after all. He found out about volleyball literally a couple months ago at the end of elementary school when he was off to _baseball_ practice. He’s still learning the rules, but generally, he gets it: three touches on one side maximum and the ball must hit the ground within the enemy’s lines for your side to win.

So, he’s there, first day, with five other firsties who want to try out this sport. He’s the shortest, tiny, and the third-years tower above him even as he screams that he’ll hit his growth spurt soon! But he’s twelve, and already, the other boys by him are inching higher and higher, and Shouyou inwardly curses the Hinata family genes.

But the team doesn’t care, they play for fun, generally, but what competitive sport doesn’t have players that play to win? The coach looks at Hinata and has him practice receives, always, every day, until Shouyou’s forearms are bleeding pink beneath his skin from the spikes that the _tall_ second and third-years jump and slam down to.

“You’re fast, Hinata-kun, you’ve got good reflexes and physical ability. With you, we’ll be unstoppable!”

This makes Shouyou incredibly happy until he learns _that liberos can't attack._

Shouyou is incredibly frustrated. He wants to jump! He wants to fly! He wants to be like the little giant on TV during High School Nationals!

Not this.

So, after official practices, he shows his teammates, gets their setter to toss a ball, and he jumps and misses by two hands-spans. He should’ve jumped higher, but— he miscalculated. He never got a toss before, okay? But still! Still! He can jump high! Aren’t they amazed?

“I can still jump higher than you,” his super tall classmate sighs.

“Maybe if you jump earlier or later than the blockers, it’ll work?” another chimes in.

"You should stick with receives, though. We already wasted a lot of time on that," the _actual_ libero says.

“Well, I guess if you keep practicing, we’ll ask the coach,” the setter says, and sets a lower toss.

But one month passes, then another, and suddenly it’s been a year and he’s still decked out in a uniform, soon-to-be-first-string because Shouyou tries his best, but he's never in the same coloured uniform as the rest of his team. Always the inverse, the stand-out, the one chained to defence.

Somehow, he finds himself always behind, training under his libero senpai, and it doesn't take long for even _Shouyou_ to light the dark room in his mind and realize that he's being groomed to take over once senpai has to leave.

He understands the importance of the libero. But. But to receive someone _else’s_ spike from the top though and never allowed to jump— 

It grates.

It hurts.

He _hates_ it.

Shouyou knows the world is ending when he realizes he’s hating playing _volleyball,_ the most magnificent sport to mankind.

“But I’m jumping higher now! I could beat any block! Why can’t you toss to me?” he asks.

“You always miss,” the other shrugs, “and you shouldn’t be practicing spikes anyway. It’ll mess you up, and if you accidentally spike during a game, it’ll be a foul. Don’t sweat it, Shou-chan!”

Shouyou holds the volleyball in a white-knuckled grip as the others around him line up for final greetings at the end of their practice game.

He pastes a smile on his face and plays, getting better and better in a position he never asked for. He’s more agile, his receives get to the setter, he cheers for his team, they cheer for him, and they’re good. They win more often than they lose.

He begs and bows and studies.

At the end of his second year, with his straight Bs and an A, his parents allow him the transfer to Yukigaoka.

Here, there’s no volleyball team. No coach to force him to the ground. No team that cheers as he’s forced to only hit the ball ever as support or in defense.

His elementary friends Kouji and Izumi are there, so it’s not all unfamiliar faces in a school 15 minutes further than before. He manages to get them to toss to him. He recruits some firsties to create a ragtag boys volleyball team. Time flies faster than ever before they’re off to InterHigh with some persuasion on Shouyou’s part.

When he meets Kageyama Tobio, his monster powerhouse team, and loses in under an hour— 

_“What have you been doing the last three years?”_

🏐

Imagine this: Tobio is in middle school when he meets a tiny goblin volleyball player and his merry band. It's not even a team, it's a bunch of cheering children vaguely athletic and a single volleyball player that is trying to do everything. The orange-haired kangaroo receives, the others all converge to try and put it back in the air a second time (that does not qualify as a set, not at all) and the bouncing tangerine jumps and _spikes_.

The spikes are easy to return, because there's less and less power as the match goes on.

But those first few.

Those first _flew._

Tobio has never seen a kid so tiny, with a gangly structure and short limbs, be able to jump so high, run so quick, and always, _always_ hitting a 'set' (Tobio refuses to call any of those true tosses, because the balls from the rest of this middle school team fly _everywhere_ and he honestly is baffled how the green #1 can get to the ball).

But it's easy to pick this team apart after the first few points, regardless that #1 must be running on fumes. If they force #1 to set, by making literally any other player receive (sometimes, they even _miss a receive_ like, why are they even on the team?) and the orange-haired kid cannot spike.

It's easy in theory, but that #1 is fast, his teammates are fast to jump _away_ from incoming attacks _(are they scared of the ball!?)_ and can leap into defence and spring the ball to the closest teammate to launch _back_ at him to attack.

Even when he cannot spike either, on those lucky receives his teammates seem to catch by the skin of their teeth, #1 gives back easy, rainbow tosses to the tallest player on their court. It's never a _good_ attack, but the balls got to the player and the player still hit them.

It's amazing, and as beautiful as the fire of a slowly-timed train wreck. 

Tobio cannot look away in the hour it takes to finish this team off, this orange-haired _idiot_ that is still smiling even as Tobio can see the sweat and exhaustion.

Tobio doesn't know what he feels right now, but he doesn't want to let this orange-haired idiot out of his sight. Because how on Earth did this kid —this tiny, short, never-seen-before _child—_ try to do what Tobio's always wanted to secretly do: to serve, receive, set, spike, to play this game for himself, by himself—

_“What have you been doing the last three years?”_

**Author's Note:**

> okay so, like, this is unbetaed because I literally just finished it in less than two hours after I started realizing these kagehina fics all seem to be similar??? and then i saw the tags more closely and realized THIS IS KAGEHINA WEEK and the first day ENDS SOON and i wanted to join smth like this for so long and oof im sorry everyone, this first instalment is fast and toxic and not a very good start to their relationship (I WANTED FLUFF AND SIMPLE ADMIRING OF EACH OTHER NOT THIS) im sorry.
> 
> this was sorta inspired by this mad idea of hinata somehow getting good all around like in brazil but EARLIER but now I hate it because it undermines hinata's growth :((( we'll see what I can do with this when I am not under time constraints and can fully read this thing thru ooooof
> 
> I'll clean this up tmr or sometime soon but I GOTTA POST BEFORE MIDNIGHT (i have adrenaline and it is currently 23:57 on my clock)


End file.
